The Only Thing We Have To Fear is Art Itself

An inter­est­ing if brief explo­ration of defus­ing the cap­i­tal A in «Art», Art & Fear sug­gests that mak­ing art is an activ­i­ty like any oth­er. Art does not need to be pre­cious or per­fect, it sim­ply needs to be made. The more art we make the bet­ter we get at it, and the fear asso­ci­at­ed with per­fec­tion­ism does not serve us. There are genius­es out there, most­ly in his­to­ry books, who were blessed with an instinc­tive knowl­edge of their art. Bayles’ exam­ple of this is Mozart. But what of those of us who were not born know­ing how to com­pose music but had to learn it the way ordi­nary mor­tals do? His­to­ry is replete with bril­liant artists who devel­oped over time, as we do with any skill. 

The point of this book is to help us to let go of all the pre­con­ceived notions of what it is to be an artists and sim­ply get on with mak­ing art. It’s a noble effort, very down to earth and straight­for­ward, and as already men­tioned, brief. 

Art & Fear, David Bayles 

5/10

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Image Con­tin­u­um Press Paper­back, 2001 

122 Pages